I’ve been thinking and planning to build/install a custom version of either devian or ubuntu which will be installed on a USB Drive for carrying arround wherever I go.
I want this to achieve the following
- Porvide a fully functional bash shell.
- Allow a X server to run with either Fluxbox or XFCE.
- Synchronise with Local copies of Applications like Evolution and Opera
- Have basic multimedia features.
I thought it would be better to have two partitions. A FAT32 Partition to store all my data (will be mounted under /media/data of /home/surajram/data). This partition should be accessible by traditional Windows or DOS OSs. I guess it would be best to make the other partitition as ext3. I am also thinking of using an alternate filesystem like reiserFS, have to consider the performance differences.
Any windows mobile user will know how the Windows Mobile needs a lot of soft resets and hard resets to keep it working smooth. With every such reset, you tend to loose a large potential of data if not backed up properly. Trust me, Active sync is not the solution to your backup needs.
While backing up any notes, documents or any other file is pretty much straight forward as copying the files and pasting them on your storage card using the file manager, Backing up PIM data like contacts, calendar entries, tasks and e mails is a difficult chore…
Thankfully there is a freeware Data Backup utility that handles this task with ease and simplicity. Titled HTC Data Backup (I am not sure how it is related to the HTC) this midget of an application backs up all your data to a file on the storage card. (You can specify the file name). It also has another ‘restore’ mode to restore any backed up data in case of a device failure. Neat eh?
Download HTC Data Backup
For some unknown reason, wordpress dosent seem to behave properly with Linux. For instance i’m not able to make new posts etc from my ubuntu machine. I have tried it using FF3 and Opera9.5 but both seem to fail 
Even after using Linux for a long time, I’ve allways been having Outlook on my Windows XP/Vista installations just for the sake of synchronising all my PIM Data (Contacts, Tasks, Calendar, E-Mail) with my HP Ipaq and my Sony Ericsson Mobile Phone. When I found out about the SynCE project, I decided to give it a try and after carefully backing up my data on the Pocket PC, I decided to reset my PDA to the factory state (I’ve been planning to reset the PDA for a long time as the Microsoft OS became too slow for normal usage) and sync my Evolution address book with it. By the end I was surprised to find out that the process of synchronising works better with Linux. (I used to have a very unstable connection with Activesync/Windows Mobile Device Center. One out of maybe thirty attempts used to be successfull). So I’ll guide you on how i got it to work.
Continue reading ‘Sync Windows Mobile with Linux’
Debian GNU/Linux is my favorite Linux distribution for servers and most desktops. It’s wide availability of binary packages combined with a strong developer/support community makes it my favorite.
Invariably, every time I install Linux, i tend to remove a lot unused packages from the new system. So I have come to the conclusion that the minimal install is what i need to begin with for all requirements.
This post should guide you to install a minimal copy of Linux.
Continue reading ‘Debian Minimal Install Tutorial’
